Where There Is No Dentist 2012 197
Working for Change In Your Community
By teaching and talking about HIV, dental workers can play an important role
in helping to stop the spread of the disease.
Treating people with HIV infection helps to prevent its spread.
You can help if you:
• Learn as much as you can about HIV, how it is spread, and how to
prevent it.
• Share your knowledge about HIV with others in community meeting
places—like schools, stores, religious meetings, restaurants and bars,
and military bases.
• Teach people how to practice safer sex to stop the spread of HIV. Safer
sex is when no body fluids pass from one person to another during
sex.
• Educate people about the importance of using clean needles for
injections. In hospitals and health centers, make sure your needles
come out of a sealed, sterile packet. Set up needle exchange programs
for IV drug users in your community.
Practice Safer Sex
Safer sex means to:
• have sex with only one partner who has sex
only with you.
• always use condoms during sex, and help
women learn how to ask men to use them.
• think of other ways to have pleasure, such
as touching genitals with the hands, and
rubbing or massaging different parts of the
body.
• not have sex with someone who shares
drug injection needles.
If the whole community has good information about HIV and safer sex, men
and women and their partners may feel more comfortable making changes
in their sex lives to protect themselves. No one has become infected with
HIV because he or she spoke openly and honestly about safer sex.